To kick off the new season, we’re delighted to be joined by behavioural economist Dr Nick Southgate, who will deliver his expert insights on how to create collaborative environments and lead brilliant teams.

With the global business landscape evolving at an accelerating pace, it’s more important than ever for leaders to build innovative teams that can adapt to the changing demands of customers and clients.

Dr. Nick Southgate is a specialist in applying insights from behavioural economics to create valuable lessons for business, from organisational behaviour and leadership to consumer engagement, brand-building and the psychology of financial markets. He is represented by Chartwell Speakers exclusively for speaking engagements. Read Nick’s full speaker profile for more information and latest availability.

Posted at August 18, 2015, by Mackenzie Fant, Comments Off on Erik Wahl outlines the five traits of creative leaders

Writing for Fast Company, internationally recognised artist, and best-selling author Erik Wahl outlines the five traits of creative leaders, and how to become one. As the number of people who are becoming self-employed is growing, it is a sign that more people are comfortable taking leadership into their own hands. Wahl believes that becoming a successful leader not only takes courage, but also demands creativity. By tapping into this creative intelligence, you are able to keep ahead of the crowd.

According to Wahl, the five traits that most creative leaders possess are as follows:

They rattle cages

They listen to intuition

They move fast

They have convictions and stick to them

They don’t (only) do what’s expected of them

Wahl concludes, “Ultimately, the real difference between you and the creative leaders who inspire you is action. You have the innate capacity to develop all the qualities they possess. The key is to start. Start today. Start now. Don’t wait around until life demands something of you—it always will. That’s not what leaders do.”

Posted at May 11, 2015, by Raleigh Addington, Comments Off on Former England Cricket Captain Andrew Strauss named Director of England Cricket

Andrew Strauss, the highly acclaimed former England Test and ODI cricket Captain, has been named Director of English Cricket by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).

In this new role, Andrew will be responsible for the long-term strategy of the England men’s cricket team, whilst overseeing the performance and development programmes of the national side

“Andrew’s breadth of ideas, his passion for England cricket and his proven leadership skills shone out,” English Cricket’s Chief Executive Tom Harrison told the ECB’s official website. “He was an exceptional England captain, is an authoritative voice on the modern game and has a wealth of experience building successful teams. Andrew’s also widely respected across the sporting landscape. We’re delighted he’s joining us at the ECB as we set out to create a new strategy for the game.”

This report explores the space in which people work, to see how well it serves them, their customers and society itself. Roger believes that anyone who takes the time to reflect on human behaviour will observe the impact, both actual and perceived, of different styles of leadership and management on organisational performance.

Roger explains that organisations are very simply collections of people, ideally sharing a common purpose, a set of values, a thoughtful decision-making approach and a will to succeed. He goes on to note that if leadership is “getting ordinary people to do extraordinary things”, care needs to be taken by leaders and managers to espouse the ethical behaviours which inspire confidence, trust and followership.

Strong ethics and high levels of organisational performance go hand in hand. Across all 11 performance indicators explored in our survey, high levels of performance were associated with higher ethical scores.

Almost a third of managers rate their organisation as mediocre or worse on ethical behaviour

Despite evidence of links between good ethics and business performance, almost a third of managers (29%) say their organisation is mediocre or plain poor when it comes to standards of ethical behaviour. This equates to nearly one million (928,000) managers across the UK.

The public sector and large organisations face the biggest challenges

Large employers face the biggest challenges when it comes to ethics: managers in big organisations are four times more likely than those in small firms to rate their organisation as poor (12% vs. 3%). Big organisations are also less than half as likely as small firms to be rated as excellent (23% vs. 59%).

When it comes to different economic sectors, it’s clear that the public sector faces the biggest challenges. Some 13% of managers in the public sector rate their organisation as poor, and only 20% give top marks for ethics, which is half as many as those in PLCs (40%).

Managers in growing organisations score higher on ethical behaviour than their colleagues in declining ones

37% of managers in growing organisations give themselves top marks for ethical behaviour, compared to 19% in declining organisations. Those in declining organisations are also much more likely to say that their organisation behaves unethically (22% vs. 6%).

Junior managers don’t share senior managers’ outlook on ethics

There are also significant differences between junior and senior managers. Senior managers have a rosier picture of current standards than those in junior roles – 48% believes their organisation has excellent ethical behaviour, compared to only 22% of junior managers, who clearly tend to believe their organisation could do a lot better.

Managers in organisations with coaching, visionary and democratic leadership styles report that their organisations perform better on all performance measures than those organisations where command and control or pacesetting styles are adopted. Only 18% of managers working in a commanding and controlling environment rate the effectiveness of their organisation’s management as ‘excellent’, compared to 75% in coaching environments.

Ethics helps to engage employees

A more ethical culture is linked to higher levels of employee engagement, especially the ethic of care, where individuals think about ethical decisions primarily in terms of the impact of action on others. Managers in organisations with excellent staff satisfaction levels score 13% higher on the ethic of care. The ability to attract new staff is also linked to an 8% difference in the level of care.

Better ethics means happier customers

Managers in organisations with excellent customer satisfaction score 9% higher on the ethics of care and reason than those who admit their organisation does a poor job for customers. This may seem obvious, but it does warrant the question of why almost a third of managers (30%) say their organisation is performing either in a mediocre way or just plain poorly when it comes to customer satisfaction. If caring more means higher customer satisfaction scores, why is not everyone doing it?

Being ethical pays off when it comes to managing risk

More ethical attitudes can pay off when it comes to risk management too. Excellent risk management is associated with higher scores across each of the three ethics measured by MoralDNA, including the ethic of reason (8% higher), care (10%) and obedience (14%).

Putting it into practice

Based on the empirical research and the leader interviews conducted for this report, we recommend that organisations act to improve their ethics and support better performance with seven key areas.

We rate Robin Kermode very highly as a conference speaker on the art of communication, exerting leadership and getting across a message. Robin is an actor by training (he played John Major in Oscar-winning The Iron Lady). He is also a gifted coach, with a thriving board-level practice helping business leaders improve their communication to internal and external stakeholders. Robin helps his clients ‘centre’ their voice, making them sound real and authentic; he believes we can all be more physically dynamic, and at the same time open and relaxed, so that the end result is believable, friendly and charismatic.

We’ve had tremendous feedback from audiences who have seen Robin in action. And everyone who works with him – us included – feel him to be an unusually fun and supportive presence. Highly recommended.